Sue and I recently attended the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, California, North America’s largest wine industry gathering. Attendance was about 10,000 for the meetings, seminars, and the massive trade show. The event is simply too big to summarize, so we jotted down field notes instead to give you a sense of the action. Here, in no particular order, are some of our observations.

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Wine industry trends. White is the new red. Stable sales are the new growth. Wine sales are down in terms of both volume and value. The number of wineries in the U.S. actually fell. Most of the decrease was in the category of “virtual wineries,” which sell wine that is actually made by other companies under contract (a surprisingly common practice).

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Tough times for the nurseries that supply grape plants. One vendor said that if the best year was 100, the current status is about 20. Vineyard acreage in California and elsewhere continues to fall with more removals to come.  This is part of a global trend.

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The luncheon speaker was Alecia Moore, better known by her professional name Pink (later that week she performed along with other artists including Stevie Wonder, Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, and others at the FireAid benefit concert).  What’s her wine connection? As she put it, she is a “celebrity winemaker,” but not a marketing play as is sometimes the case. Her Two Wolves vineyard and winery in Santa Barbara County is a serious operation and significant commitment. Many in the audience were inspired by her story and obvious enthusiasm.

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Heard on the floor of the trade show from a first-timer: “How do you take it all in? There’s so much!” Answer: A piece at a time.

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The Unified is an opportunity for those in the wine industry to meet with friends and colleagues. Lots of hugging, hand-shaking, back-slapping, high-fiving. Wine is a people business and this is the place to make and maintain personal and business relationships.

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Bottle weight. Producers are opting for lower-weight bottles, and looking to source them domestically. Shipping costs and schedules — and their uncertainties —  are big factors. Heavier bottles are harder to move around. So, shipping and schlepping. Some producers are opting for lighter-weight bottles to maintain a price point. Question: Do consumers (still) think that bottle weight indicates wine quality?

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Multilingual wine. The Unified is designed for the California wine industry, but it is an international event. Languages heard: American English, Canadian English, Australian English, British English, Spanish, Italian, French. No doubt there were even more. There are several Spanish-language sessions.

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The locavore paradox. Many restaurants highlight their locavore credentials. Farm to table. Locally sourced meat and produce. Think global, eat local. But how many feature local wines? Aren’t wines the ultimate product of place? Shouldn’t they have a place on the locavore table?

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There is not much wine actually consumed during the day at the Unified (the nights are a different matter) because it is a business meeting and trade fair, not a consumer-tasting event. We had wine at the keynote luncheon and there were  tastings sponsored by regional wine associations on the trade show floor on Wednesday afternoon. This year we focused on New Mexico’s wine industry, which is celebrating its tradition of fine sparkling wines by hosting the first Global Sparkling Wine Summit this summer. Great wine. Learned a lot.

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Sauvignon Blanc. Each year the organizers choose a particular wine grape variety to showcase and this time around it was Sauvignon Blanc. Aromatic white wines are popular right now and Sauvignon Blanc is doing well. The audience heard from several winemakers and tasted wines from California and Washington State.

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Sue never gets tired of walking the trade show floor. So many interesting people, products, and services. It is the American wine industry, deconstructed, and brought together in one very large room.

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New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov moderated a session on the challenge of telling wine’s story in the context of strong headwinds such as the WHO’s finding that no level of alcohol consumption is safe. But is this a challenge or an opportunity? Maybe the wine industry needed a nudge to get its act together and make the case for wine and not just individual wine brands or regions.